Wacky Wednesdays

When my son was in Montessori I volunteered to be snack chairman for a year. That entailed getting a snack, milk, and juice for approximately twenty children in early care. Providing a morning snack, juice, and milk for upwards of eighty children during regular class hours. Then making sure the after-school group of twenty plus children had something. The school had a no-sugar policy. The toddler class was not allowed grapes unless they were cut in half to lessen a choking hazard. Also, the school was required to meet certain health guidelines on dairy, fruit, and protein and post the weekly menu on the bulletin board for the health department to inspect. I knew none of this when I volunteered for the position.

Fortunately, I had a wonderful group of parents on my committee. One parent had her two children in early and afternoon care. She was unable to make snacks but offered to pick up the required three to four gallons of milk each day and deliver it to the school. Another mother made sure juice was always prepared in the refrigerator, then cleaned, cut, and labeled the fruit bowls for each classroom.

I made monthly trips to Sam's for bulk purchases of goldfish, graham crackers, peanuts in the shell, raisins, and pretzels. These were stored in large containers in each classroom in the event a child didn't care for the daily snack offering. Each parent was assigned one Wednesday during the school year to bring in eighty snacks. Every Monday each child was to bring a piece of fruit. My snack committee made banana, pumpkin, blueberry, apple, or zucchini muffins or bread. One hundred twenty servings were kept in the school freezer for emergencies. This stash was used once a month and replaced with a new batch of one hundred twenty servings.

Mondays the children had fruit. Tuesday was some type of muffin or bread baked by the committee members. Wednesday was christened Wacky Wednesday because we never knew what a parent was going to bring. Wednesdays may have tortillas with cheese, yogurt, or Chex mix, cheese strings, or slices of deli meat. Thursday servings were from the containers in the classroom. Friday was clean-up day for any leftover fruit, plus another offering from the baking committee.

I wanted to encourage our son to try new foods and I needed help from his father, who was a picky eater. Thus, our personal Wacky Wednesday saga started. We all agreed to try one new dish or a new ingredient every Wednesday. We were all to have at least one bite before offering an opinion. It had to be something none of us had eaten before. This last rule was selfish. I wasn't interested in eating mountain oysters or frog legs and I knew my husband had eaten these before our marriage.

Every week my son and I would go to the store and look for a new item. Most of them came from the produce department. We tried jicama, star fruit, a lemon jest that looked like a hand, pomegranate, turnips, prickly pear cactus, spaghetti squash, and purple cabbage. We tried the hybrid produce of broccoflower and plumcots. We ate quail eggs and tried wild muscadine grapes.

Sometimes we didn't know what we purchased, or how to prepare it. We would see something different, take it home, then look through cookbooks and the internet for recipes and ideas.

Sometimes a Wacky Wednesday menu happened by accident on another day of the week. A school friend was invited to stay for spaghetti. The sauce recipe called for sour cream, which I discovered too late, that I didn't have in the house. I substituted yogurt. It wasn't until I had ladled the yogurt into the pasta that I saw it was vanilla flavored rather than plain. The kids said it tasted like spaghetti O's and ate it all.

My attempt at sushi wasn't well received. The carrots were sliced thin, but the rice wasn't sticky. The seaweed wrap smelled too strong for us. Even the dog refused it. We ate peanut butter sandwiches instead that night.

We managed to create, find, and eat something different once a week for almost two years before it stretched to a once a month, then once in a while event.

I was pleasantly surprised when my son and his college roommate started cooking. They made pasta and cinnamon rolls from scratch. They ground their own meat. They had dinner parties to show off their cooking skills. They confessed they looked in cookbooks to find something neither had eaten nor made before. One Thanksgiving we brought them four pans of enchiladas. They were buffalo, beef, veggie, and Chorizo. The tradition continues.